Why is Aditya Birla Group big in my life?
Growing up in India if someone asks which are the biggest companies there are chances that people might say Reliance or Infosys. Now ask them have they used their products, chances are about only half of them would have. Now ask them have they used aluminum wrap or pantaloons clothes or which company’s suit do they have or which cement they used while constructing their dream home. They would all definitely point to one single company even though they might not know that all these products are of a single company. That’s how big a brand Aditya Birla Group is.
Now let me go into flashback, I picture myself going to my school, and we all know that lunch breaks were our best periods, the happiness of getting warm food was all because of Freshwrapp foils by Hindalco which is owned by ABG. For me this was my first interaction with their brand.
Now I grew up a little more although still a school going kid and I remember advertisements on the front page of the newspaper showing kids in stylish clothes playing and cycling, yes they were Allen Solly ads. I tell my Mom I want these same clothes and like every Indian household there were conditions attached to it. I got a tee and capris after scoring well in my class 5th exams.
Further growing up I reached college where we needed stylish and trendy clothes but in college all of us are too broke but we all still want a branded name. Welcome Pantaloons. Every college goer’s go-to place. One single place to get all the latest trends.
After college I go to my first job and I need to wear formal clothes to the office. Help me Peter England. I got all my trousers and shirts for that first job and they never disappointed. One month down the line I get my first salary I think of giving my younger sister a gift. I get to know that she wants a particular dress from Forever 21.
Now I don’t have to go too much into flashback, recently I clear my MBA exams. Now interviews are the thing on my mind. Everyone says first impressions matter a lot, you need to suit up. Which brand comes to my mind? Van Heusen. Who knows maybe I got lucky because of my suit and ended up here at MDI?
This was my story and how even though I never knew who owned all these brands I still kept coming across them. I’m sure everyone would have a different story attached with them and that’s the beauty of ABG.
How have I made an impact?
In my final year in college I got an intern at Cisco which everyone knows is one of the best company to work for. What I didn’t realize was I got into a completely coding job which I had no knowledge about. Even though I tried my level best but I couldn’t convert my intern into a full time job. Since I was doing an intern I couldn’t sit for most of my placements as well.
So at the end of my intern I was without a job and completely clueless about what to do next in life. Through some contacts and referrals I got a sales job in a startup, I was the first guy to be recruited. Being an introvert, without any clue about sales and working in a bootstrapped startup came a lot of challenges. I had to prove my worth to the CEO else I would have been out of my job and to top that I had to compete with 3 more sales people who had few years of work experience.
I started with reading a lot of sales books, different strategies to use against different people how to counter people and address their need. I failed miserably for 2 months. Things didn’t work out on the basis of what I had read, our CEO was short-tempered and he kept piling on the pressure on us. Since our product wasn’t established even the others struggled.
At that point of time I still kept my cool and kept working hard on correcting my pitch, left all inhibitions behind and kept going repeatedly after our targets. Finally in 3rd month I was able to get my first client. However just when I thought things would become smooth it turned out to be completely opposite. We were still far from achieving our targets and our CEO was blasting everyone. 3 of my team mates (which were all of the people on the company except the technology team) left on the same day.
Now I had to handle sales alone, this further pumped me and gave me a lot of more potential customers. From the 4th month things started to get better and by the end of 5th month I had converted 10 clients all single handedly. At that point of time I had developed a great bond with the CEO and he trusted me to carry out everything as I wished for. I was able to recruit 4 new freshers and train them. I was able to modify the product based on what I felt would be best for the clients. I could run targeted marketing campaigns on different social media platforms.
Now when I come to think about it maybe for a lot of people this might be a common problem at work but for me after having worked for 3 years this was the most challenging, refreshing and learning curve of my life and I’m thankful that I took that big leap of faith of going into sales when I had no experience. As it stands today I got a consulting job in Accenture without any MBA just because of my sales role.